Sunday, April 11, 2010

Day 2 - Breakfast at our hotel was interesting in that we seem to be the only Americans there. To one side is a French family, and on the other is a British one. I guess this makes us the Channel table. Behind us is another family from Russia. As we leave the hotel on bike, we were passed by a Land Cruiser camper with German plates. And this is off season on a weekday. While I've never thought of Big Sur as a major tourist destination, it clearly is.

We think of each day's ride as two halves with a lunch stop in between. The first half of this day is pretty nice save for one climb. A note about the climbs on this road: the elevation gain isn't very impressive with the tallest single climb looking to be about 900-1000ft, but the grades can be occasionally butt-kicking, particularly on a loaded bike. We stop for lunch at an inn near Molera State Park, where the Blue Jays would steal the food right off your plate if given a chance. We watch one of them take 4 packets of Equal from the table next to us and fly off. That's going to be disappointing...

Full of lunch and ice cream, we take off and immediately find ourselves on a hill that never ends, and has no shoulder. Bionica is on the heavy bike, with me in tow, and is charging up it at a good pace until a big truck goes past us and blows the touring bike around and nearly off the road. This happens a few times, as those panniers can act a big sail just when you don't want them to. Eventually, we crest the top and the rest of the ride is pretty smooth. We arrive at the Lucia around 4:30pm, in time for me to realize I have a good sunburn going. We are staying at a lodge here for the night, and luckily, the attached store has two bottles of Negra Modelo left in the fridge. Suffer we must.